


There Were Days I Almost Liked You

by Drakey



Series: Not So Much [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Lots and Lots of Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-13
Updated: 2015-01-13
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:49:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Without someone to spend Valentine's Day with, Harry and Draco both resort to getting completely trashed at the pub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Were Days I Almost Liked You

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't actually seen this concept as a recurring thing, but it amused me too much to ignore it.

The idea had occurred to Harry around the tenth. He only screwed up the courage to knock on the door of Malfoy Manor on the fourteenth. He and Draco were really only slightly less than frosty with each other, but he was the only person Harry knew on a first name basis--and how weird was that?--who wasn't attached. Even Neville was spending the next couple of days with someone named Jennifer, who Harry was fairly sure wasn't a potted plant. Ginny, though, was intent on finishing her schooling, and it was obvious by then that they weren't getting back together. This left Harry dateless. And knocking on Draco's door.

He tried not to think about it too hard.

Draco answered the door himself, looking just as strung-out and stressed as always. He raised an eyebrow and completely failed to seem the least bit surprised when he said, smoothly, "there aren't enough roses in the world to make me your Valentine, Harry."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Obviously. I was just wondering if you'd like to go to that new tavern in Diagon Alley. We're both dateless, so we might as well be dateless while hanging out and getting completely pissed so we don't remember the dateless bit."

"Well," Draco said with a suppressed chuckle in his voice, "when you put it that way, firewhiskey awaits us."

And so it was. They stumbled out of the Giggling Werewolf at three in the morning singing a wildly inappropriate song about a Muggle woman who seduces all the wizards of England thanks to a really spectacular... well, it was inappropriate. Harry fell asleep an hour later in a big, overstuffed armchair that Draco had always hated, and he woke up with a pounding headache when Draco dumped a glass of icewater on him sometime in the afternoon, claiming that since he was miserable, and misery loves company, Harry should really be awake.

+----+

"Oughtn't we be going to the pub by now?" Draco asked about the third time Harry lost a game of chess, and Harry looked up. It was the second year since Hogwarts, and Draco seemed to have decided, as he sometimes did with these sorts of things, that Valentine's At The Pub was a Tradition, and therefore on the list of Things Not To Be Missed.

Harry shrugged and got up. "Giggling Werewolf's closed out, you know," he said. 

Draco snorted. "They watered down the Ogden's, anyway. Down to the Leaky Cauldron?"

Harry shook his head. "We're getting Muggle drinks tonight."

And so they did. Draco, it turned out, favored screwdrivers. Harry got deep enough into his cups to start taking suggestions from other people at the bar, which was how they ended up each downing the entirety of something called a "slow, comfortable screw up against the wall," which was about four shots of knock-you-on-your-ass liquor with enough orange juice in it to make you think it wasn't going to ruin your night.

The orange juice was a damn liar. By the time they staggered out of the pretentiously-named Le Bleu, getting "screwed" had been followed by Jello shots, which had been followed by getting cut off. Draco declared the bartender a prat and they made their laughing way to the nearest isolated corner to summon the Knight Bus. When it arrived, they both climbed on, collapsed into chairs, and accepted anti-nausea potions. It was only after the potions kicked in that both men started laughing.

"Anyone told me I'd be getting sloshed with you on the regular back when we were in Hogwarts, I'd have hit him," Harry said.

"Ah, there were days I almost liked you," Draco shot back. "You did spend a lot of time in the infirmary, after all."

Harry flipped him a two-fingered salute and they talked about what had been going on in their lives since the last time they spoke. It was only after they got off the bus that Harry said, in the very loud voice of a drunk man trying to be confidential, "I almost had a three-way on Halloween, you know."

Draco shoved him and they both nearly fell. "Get out! You? A three-way? Who?"

"Well, George Weasley's got this new girlfriend, right, and she's a bit... experimental. So the three of us were getting pissed, and she talked us into it. George tripped on the stairs on the way to it, though."

Draco glared at Harry. "I'm not--"

"Don't worry, you're not in danger. Believe me, you'd have to wave some bloody enormous cans in my face for me to think about it with you."

Draco rolled his eyes. "You are a pervert."

"They were really nice," Harry said. "I'm willing to tolerate a little sausage in my custard if it's nice enough."

This time, when Draco shoved him, they did both fall over.

+----+

In 2001, Draco brought a date. She ruined things completely. Apparently, she thought it was "weird and cynical" to reserve Valentine's Day for getting smashed with your male friends. After she broke up with him on the spot, Draco shrugged, ordered an entire bottle of vodka, and then asked Harry what he intended to drink.

+----+

"So there I was," Harry said, drawing an abstract pattern on the bar in what he was pretty sure was spilled sour mix, "walking away from the stadium after the game, and I hear this voice behind me go 'Harry,' and I turn around and it's bloody Ginny Weasley, and she's giving me this look like she wants to throw me on the ground and ride me like a broomstick."

Draco made a very sage "Hm" of acknowledgement, and Harry gave him an expectant look. "Oh," Draco said when he realized Harry wanted advice. "You ought to shag her."

Harry almost put his chin down on the bar, and Draco looked eager to laugh at him for getting sour mix in his scraggly goatee, but he managed to remember not to. "Tom, c'n I get another shot?" Harry called. Tom passed a shot of Firewhiskey to Harry, and Harry grimaced as he downed it. "If I shag her, she'll expect us to have a relationship."

"So?" Draco said. "You've been pining after her for three years, I thought that's what you wanted."

Harry sighed. "She'd better understand that Valentine's is for getting utterly wasted with you."

"Hopefully she'll join us," Draco muttered. He glared down the bar. "Tom, another Valentine's Special, Harry's getting morose!"

+----+

Ginny wasn't happy about the open bar at the wedding reception, but it was the price she paid for marrying Harry on Valentine's Day. And besides, it was a shotgun wedding. He needed to de-stress anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> "I'm willing to tolerate a little sausage in my custard if it's nice enough" is possibly the worst sentence I have ever put into Harry Potter's mouth. I apologize for nothing.


End file.
